1. Technical Field
The present application relates in one respect to a beverage bottling plant for filling bottles with a liquid beverage filling material, a container filling plant container information adding station, such as, a labeling station, configured to add information to containers, such as, bottles and cans, and modules for labeling stations and a bottling plant having a mobile module carrier. The present application further relates to a module carrier for use in bottle handling machines that are constructed in a modular manner.
2. Background Information
A beverage bottling plant for filling bottles with a liquid beverage filling material can possibly comprise a beverage filling machine with a plurality of beverage filling positions, each beverage filling position having a beverage filling device for filling bottles with liquid beverage filling material. The filling devices may have an apparatus being configured to introduce a predetermined volume of liquid beverage filling material into the interior of bottles to a substantially predetermined level of liquid beverage filling material, and the apparatus configured to introduce a predetermined flow of liquid beverage filling material comprising apparatus being configured to terminate the filling of beverage bottles upon liquid beverage filling material reaching said substantially predetermined level in bottles. There may also be provided a conveyer arrangement being configured and disposed to move bottles, for example, from an inspecting machine to the filling machine. Upon filling, a closing station closes filled bottles. There may further be provided a conveyer arrangement configured to transfer filled bottles from the filling machine to the closing station; as well as a loading station that is configured to load filled bottles into containers, for example, in a six-pack arrangement. There may also be provided a conveyor arrangement configured to transfer filled bottles from the closing station to the loading station.
In the packaging of wares of diverse sorts, such as, for example, beverages or items of food, it has been found highly advantageous to configure the containers in which such wares are offered as advantageously and appealingly as possible. Aside from configuration of the body of containers, also the container labeling, that is ever increasing in display, also plays an increasingly important role.
When at one labeling machine several different container types are to be labeled, as is now customarily always the case, or, respectively, several diverse label sets need to be processed, down times of not insignificant duration arise due to necessary refitting efforts. This is particularly the case in the event that containers need to be furnished with several labels at the front side and at the rear side.
In order so as to provide solutions to this problem, inter alia, in German Patent No. DE 199 53 255, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,362,594, and in German Patent No. DE 197 41 476, designs are presented that allow to exchange the labeling stations that are arranged at a labeling machine in full, so that the down times can be markedly reduced, because the required conversion work that is required to be performed at a labeling station can be accomplished at a separate work location and as such essentially parallel as to time, that is, without shut-down of the labeling machine.
German Patent No. DE 199 53 255, U.S. Pat. No. 4,362,594, and German Patent No. DE 197 41 476 are hereby incorporated by reference as if set forth in their entirety herein.
Although the above-cited designs in the field of labeling technology have achieved a considerable advance in the art, there is not satisfactorily achieved, by the above-cited designs, quick and economic adaptation of labeling machines to labeling requirements that significantly deviate from one another.
Thus, customarily, often the task arises, for example, to precisely align containers having an embossed logo, or cliplock bottles, prior to labeling. In this it is state of the art that functional units that perform this task are fixedly and permanently arranged at the labeling machine, which substantially permanently reduces the number of possibly labeling stations, such that one has also not available these labeling stations in the case of processing containers that need not be aligned.
Similar considerations apply with functional units that control, for example, the presence or the correct position of labels. Again, these functional units, in accordance with the state of the art, are fixedly and permanently arranged at the labeling machines, such that the disadvantages enumerated above are also applicable in these situations.
During the handling, e.g. labeling, of containers such as bottles or cans with a wide variety of labels, different aggregates are necessary, depending on the label.
For example, the paper labels which are frequently used require at least a label magazine, a glue roller, glue segments, a glue segment carousel and a gripper cylinder. On the other hand, self-adhesive labels require a label strip dispenser, for example, as well as a cutting mechanism and a transfer device.
For example, DE 197 41 476 describes the realization of labeling machines in a modular fashion. The aggregates that are necessary for the labeling are combined into a separate unit or into a module and are interchangeably installed as such on the labeling machine.
When the container packaging or labeling is changed, for example when the labels used are changed or when the number of labels to be applied to the container is changed, the entire module can be replaced with only a few manual interventions, which results in a significant reduction of the times the bottling line is required to be out of operation.
Additional advantages of this method include the fact that adjustments and/or maintenance activities on the aggregates of a module can be performed off line, for the most part, in other words without any interruption of the actual production process.
Another application by the same applicant under Case No. DE 103 06 671.3 goes even further. That application teaches that not only are the aggregates required for the actual labeling of the containers combined into one module, but additional functions that may be required on a case-by-case basis and the components necessary for their realization can each be combined into a module. These functions can include, for example, an orientation function for containers that are not rotationally symmetrical or a control function for the result of the labeling, or a lettering function for the containers to be labeled (e.g. a “sell by” date).
The devices that are currently used, which combine the aggregates required for the labeling of containers into a single interchangeable module, have the disadvantage that these modules, in spite of their heavy weight of several hundred kilograms, do not have any means to facilitate the transport of these units.
This disadvantage is felt all the more severely if it is recalled that these modules generally have to be moved long distances from their storage location or from the staging area to the labeling machines, whereby these distances must also be traveled inside existing production equipment that is in continuous operation. Lifting devices and similar equipment are also necessary to install the modules in their operating positions.
It should also be noted that because of the high costs associated with production, the dimensions and surface areas of the space available in these plants are generally very small, which means that the use of fork-lift trucks, hoist trucks or similar industrial trucks is frequently possible only to a limited extent.